Updated federal poverty line delayed due to COVID-19

Efforts to redraw Canada’s official poverty line have been delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

While the review period for the poverty line was scheduled to end in June 2020, with the revised measure ready to be used shortly after, Statistics Canada says the pandemic has made it difficult to receive feedback from experts, stakeholders and officials from different levels of government.

Statistics Canada and Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) had been working since 2018 to update the poverty line, known as the market basket measure, in order to reflect essential costs using a 2018 base year.

“Statistics Canada and ESDC have made progress in this engagement. However, we recognize that the present pandemic might not have provided the best conditions for people to provide feedback on the Market Basket Measure review,” said agency spokesperson Peter Frayne.

“Accordingly, Statistics Canada and ESDC will be extending the review period by an additional two months to the end of August.”

The measure is based on five general categories of costs needed to maintain an adequate standard of living across 50 different regions in Canada.

As it stands, the base year for the measure remains 2008, meaning certain costs such as housing are now outdated.

Since the Liberals formed government in late 2015, more than one million Canadians have risen above the poverty line. It includes both for the 2008 base year measure and a preliminary 2018 measure offered by Statistics Canada in February, when the 2018 Canadian Income Survey was released.

Frayne said following the review period, Statistics Canada will expedite publication of new poverty figures.

He added the release of the new poverty line will “provide important contextual information on the situations of Canadians prior to the COVID pandemic.”

While a bump in the official poverty rate is expected once the new measure is used, the pandemic has hit Canadians working lower wage jobs particularly hard, meaning some of the real gains in reducing poverty under the Liberal government could be erased if economic recovery efforts exclude them.